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Marketing by permission
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October 11, 2000: 8:53 a.m. ET
Entrepreneur Seth Godin preaches new tactics for a new economy
By Staff Writer Hope Hamashige
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Most people are bombarded by advertising every day. They are hit by it when they open the newspaper, turn on the television, open the mailbox, check their e-mail and sometimes when they answer the telephone.
Seth Godin, entrepreneur and author, is one who thinks traditional marketing won't work for most companies, particularly new companies, because the advertising is, for the most part, unwanted.
"Finding new ways, more clever ways to interrupt people doesn't work," Godin said at a gathering of e-business executives in New York on Tuesday. Traditional forms of marketing amount to "spamming" people, and spamming has not proved an effective method of getting word out about your company.
A completely passive approach, on the other hand, such as putting up a Web site and hoping someone will notice while out surfing is not a marketing strategy that is likely to draw a ton of customers either.
Try making friends first
The keys to successful marketing, according to Godin, are getting people's  permission to sell to them and to perfect the art of creating a "viral" marketing campaign. Neither approach is as easy as tacking up a billboard somewhere along Highway 101, but, if they work, they will be much more successful than any traditional method.
The difference between traditional marketing and permission marketing is in the relationship the business has to its customers. Traditional advertising tries to court strangers. Permission marketing means you have to first turn strangers into friends before selling them a product.
"Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don't," Godin said.
Godin points to Amazon.com as a company that has made friends from strangers before trying to sell to them. Presented as a courtesy to customers, the online bookseller let the 4 million customers who had bought Stephen King novels know that he had a new book out. The next day, Amazon.com sold 1 million copies.
It's not just e-commerce companies, he pointed out, that can successfully gain permission to sell to people and profit from it. Hallmark asked shoppers in its stores if they would like to be notified when Christmas ornaments go on sale. The company sent postcards to those who did and sold $100 million worth of ornaments in a day.
Godin actually practiced what he now preaches when he was running his own company, Yoyodyne. Yoyodyne, a direct marketing company, marketed only to people who agreed to receive and respond to online product pitches. Yahoo! bought Godin's company about two years ago.
Engineer a viral campaign
In his latest venture, book publishing, Godin is again applying the lessons he talks about at seminars such as these. The marketing of his latest self-  published title, "Unleashing the IdeaVirus" is in itself a test in viral marketing.
Godin refused to work with conventional publishers after they rejected some ideas he had for marketing the book. Instead, he put the book on the Internet where anyone can download it free of charge. In 30 days, he said, more than 400,000 copies had been downloaded. On the Web site, he makes it easy for anyone to download a copy and also to send one to a friend.
Later, when the $40 bound book version made its way to bookstores, it quickly rose to No. 5 on Amazon.com's bestseller list, even though it was still available for free on the Internet.
That is, in effect, one of the primary lessons of viral marketing and probably the single most difficult one for most business owners to grasp, Godin said. It's counterintuitive, but if you give your ideas away for free, you and your company will increase in value.
"Give up control and give it away," Godin said. "The more you give your idea away, the more your company is going to be worth."
'Put the money in the product'
It's not just about giving things away for free, however. Engineering viral marketing depends on, first and foremost, a good product. Without a product that people want to know about, no amount of evangelizing is going to make it work. "Put the money in the product and forget about the Super Bowl ad," Godin said.
Viral marketing works in some ways like word of mouth, but rather than fading over time, it gets bigger. Engineering a viral campaign depends also on courting evangelists, or "sneezers" -- people like technology journalists who have the ability to spread the word about your company far and wide.
You also have to be able to identify your hive, in other words, the people who will get the most use out of your products. You also need to know whether your hive has a network through which they can communicate with one another about your product. Napster, said Godin, is one company that blasted to 10 million users in a short period because it identified a hive (college students) that has the ability to communicate because most have computers and access to e-mail.
Finally, make it easy for people to pass on the word of mouth by making sure people know the name. If they can ask for it by name, or can very easily describe it, it is going to be easier to pass on.
Vindigo, said Godin, is one company that has been successful in creating a viral marketing campaign. People are talking about it, creating a buzz, but they created a product that can also be easily handed from one person to the next via Palm Pilot. 
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